Idiots Who Want YouTube Clicks Are Interfering With CA Wildfire Fight With Drones

Don't fly a drone over a wildfire or any other disaster unless you are intent
on hurting people are making property damage worse. Idiots are flying
drones over California fires, grounding firefighter aerial effotrts.

Apparently, to some people a greater number of getting themselves more clicks on YouTube and other social media is more important than firefighters' efforts to save life and property.

That's the only conclusion I can draw from an article on the Weather Channel site that reports of people flying drones above wildfires in California.  

Drones have interfered with firefighting operations in California at least 19 times so far this year, says The Weather Channel, citing other media soures like the Los Angeles Times. 

The Weather Channel offers this illustration during the Maria fire in southern California on Friday.

"A Ventura County Fire Department helicopter pilot radioed in at 3:19 a.m. local time to report that a drone was flying above the flames, presumably to capture photos or video of the dramatic scene below, the Los Angeles Times reported. The aerial fight against the wildfire was immediately stopped and aircraft remained grounded for at least 45 minutes."

I'm not inherently against flying drones to capture images of disasters or other weather drama.  If you can do it with permission from authorities, in a way in which  you know it won't interfere with operations, then it's fine.

Drones are actually helpful in disasters, if they're run by authorized people, such as emergency personnel, police, firefighters and rescue services. The trick is, they coordinate things so there's no trouble.

Drones can help emergency managers assess structural damage, where relief supplies are most needed, and the location of people that need help. Here in Vermont, State Police will be using drones for things like crime scene investigations, car crash reconstructions and search and rescue, including during weather disasters, reports VTDigger.  Drones will make these activities much more efficient.

Many legitimate news organizations also use drones, and there's nothing wrong with that, because they check with authorities first to make sure they're not screwing things up.

Firefighters themselves use drones to track the path of wildfires and assess damage. The difference is that everything's coordinated.  The helicopter and water dropping aircraft know where those firefighter drones are, and the firefighter drone operators know where the aircraft are. So it works.

Firefighters just don't know where the drones are that people send up to get cool shots of the disaster.

This type of thing keeps happening. Drones interfered with relief operations during the aftermath of Category 5 Hurricane Michael in the Florida panhandle last year. The same thing happened with drones in the Carolinas after Hurricane Florence. 

I would like to think the amateurs whose drones interfere with emergency operations just are clueless and don't know the terrible effects they're having.  But I'm afraid some of them do know and just don't care.  After all, it's not the drone operator's grandparents stuck in their hilltop home as the flames approach.  It's not their own home burning down. So the logic is, who cares, it's not affecting me.

The solution, of course, is to make it affect these drone operators. I hope these drone operators amid the California wildfires are caught and made a very public example of through aggressive criminal prosecution.

That might make the wannabe YouTube storm chasing stars think twice before sending their drones up.